Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Monday, July 20, 2015

The Nuclear Deal with Iran

The deal signed on July 14, 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (The USA, Russia, China,
France, Britain plus Germany)
is not dissimilar to the deal recently signed by Greece to “save it” from default
and bankruptcy.In both cases it is the
people who have suffered at the hands of their leaders. In both cases it is the
people that elected their leaders and have continued to do so even as their own
personal situation deteriorated.In both
cases there were no responsible leaders in power to share the consequences of
their chosen path with their people, no one willing to compromise, no one
capable of sharing responsibility for the future.

Any voices that were raised against the
leadership were not encouraged by the international community who prefer the
devil they know to the devil they do not, no matter how evil they may be and
how much it means their own people continue to suffer.But for now let us concentrate on Iran because while what has happened to Greece seriously affects the rest of Europe and
therefore, the world community, it is Iran that continues to represent the
true threat to global peace.

Regime change has its dangers – for
instance the continuing break up of Syria
and the failed status of Libya,
Iraq, Sudan and Somalia hardly inspire confidence for
long term security.And the contagion of
violence in failed states does encourage a certain sick kind of individual to
identify with that violence.Both
Islamic State and al Qaeda are products of a prejudiced theocracy that
encourages its followers to equate a better life with hating the other; and to
view violence and terror as legitimate means of achieving global domination for
the Islamic faith only.

The systemic failure in the Iran deal is that
it does not address the philosophy of violence that feeds the soul of Islamic
fundamentalism. The difference between IS in Syria, Iraq and Libya - and The Islamic
Republic of Iran is that one is a “non-State” collective of brutal murderers
motivated by their Muslim faith to conquer the globe for their faith, to
establish a global Islamic empire while the other, (Iran), is a State run by
brutal murderers who are motivated by their Muslim faith to establish a global
empire ruled by them.To the massacred, where-ever
they may reside, the minutiae of their theological differences are simply
irrelevant.

Both are worthy successors to the Crusaders of
yesteryear, neither is qualitatively different in the means they employ to
achieve their pernicious aims.

In 1095 Pope Urban II set upon a path of bloody
mayhem a Christian hoard led by aristocrats and followed by knights and
peasants in a bloody onslaught that would not abate for almost 500 years. It
was called the Crusades and millions of people died with the name of their god
on their lips, martyrs and their murderers both.In the mid 18th Century Britain exercised increasingly greater control
over India.
The Mughal Empire was already in terminal decline by the time the British
arrived in the sub-continent. Nevertheless ‘Muslim India’ associated Western
expansion with the downfall of a Muslim governed nation. The Napoleonic
invasion of Egypt and
greater Syria
contributed to that feeling of bewilderment.

At its core, Islam’s understanding of world
history is flawed in the centrality it provides to the Islamic angle in
everything. It demanded and to this day demands an explanation for how a Muslim
polity could be simply swept away and what can be done to once more regain that
control. Introspection and flawed logic
calls for separation, militancy and war against the infidel.

That militant, murderous fanaticism has neither
abated nor developed towards any understanding of a shared humanity.The same poisoned narrative of revenge and
conquest informs and feeds every debate about the Caliphate and its return to
the global stage, from contemporary times down to the 18th Century
and beyond.

Today it is al-Qaeda and Islamic State that are
the new Crusaders.And what we are
experiencing is what many people refer to as the Third World War.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an expressly
racist, malevolent political entity. It
is to be given a $100 - $150 billion lifeline without any expectation that it
rein in its military adventurism and its encouragement of a genocidal Jew
hatred.This is rewarding terrorism and
encouraging an evil regime to ever greater heights of barbarism against its own
citizens and outside its own borders.

It should not surprise us.

During the 1990’s France
and Russia profited by at
least $100Billion by exploiting the Oil for Food Program – thus ignoring the
embargo on trade with Iraq.By undermining the trade embargo Saddam
Hussein’s government was empowered to continue to oppress his own people and to
internationally export terror.By
creating an unequal sanctions regime France
and Russia
may well have facilitated 911 and all that followed from that terrible day’s
events.

In the 1990’s both George Bush the First and
Bill Clinton attempted to make peace between the US
and Syria
by negotiating with the tyrant dynasty of the Assad family. The US surreptitiously negotiated with the Syrian
regime for over a decade while it ignored Syria’s
crimes against Lebanon
and its international support for terrorism.Israel
was never the issue. Senior American negotiators were visiting Damascus
as a massive car-bomb tore apart 23 bodies in Lebanon on 14th February
2005. Rafiq al-Hariri was the primary
target, assassinated by the Syrian regime.Only then, in response, did the USA
withdraw its ambassador from Damascus.Bashar al-Assad to this day stands accused of
murdering the former Lebanese Prime Minister, as well as the twenty-two other
people who died that day.

No-one pointed out the direct correlation
between negotiation with terrorists and the crimes they are encouraged to
commit. Nor that it made the negotiators complicit in the war-crimes committed
during that period of negotiation.According to Lee Smith (“The Strong Horse”) the problem was that the
Arab – greater Muslim world now had over a decade of American appeasement of
terror and appeasing the sponsors of terror. The message that the State
Department sent out, by its actions, was that if a regime sought to gain the
attention of global leaders, terrorism and mass killing worked and had no
negative consequences. Failed policy is nevertheless a kind of policy that is
highly effective for non-state and aspiring, state players.

President George Bush the Second kept open his
options on Syria
even as he withdrew his ambassador in the wake of the Hariri assassination. And
President Obama made it a cornerstone of his foreign policy to re-engage with
regimes that are hostile to America and Western democracy even as he supported
his VP in his outrage over the announcement of further construction in
Jerusalem of 1,600 apartments on the day that VP Biden arrived for talks (in
2010).So Israel is globally condemned while
the world continues to keep largely silent as hostile Muslim regimes routinely
murder their own people as well as the people of nations, distant from their
own borders.

While silence is always viewed as acquiescence,
even as approval for terrorism, the debate over one person’s terrorism being
another’s freedom fighter is a mere distraction. If our enemy has a vision of
his or her society that is diametrically opposed to everything good that we stand
behind then we are either for ourselves or for our enemy. There is no middle
ground.

The difference between liberty and licence is the
contempt with which the latter reacts to the former.

So I do not see that embracing the evil Iranian
empire empowers Near-Eastern moderates or that it tames the Iranian beast.The public murder of gays and other
minorities in Iran
will not dissipate, if anything it will escalate.The current US Administration and other
appeasers have told us that we should not look at rhetoric but at the actions
of the regime. The hate that spews from the lips of The Supreme Leader of Iran,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his cohorts in government is not meant to mollify
us; it is the abuser acclimating us to our abuse.

In a conference that President Obama gave on 15th
July 2015 he admitted that “this deal is not contingent on Iran changing
its behavior.” This is the day the President of the United States of America disclosed that
an unrepentant tyranny has received international validation and legitimacy.

2 comments:

Our local geniuses are still ambivalent over whether Obama has done a Neville Chamberlain and we can look forward to a nuclear world war three thanks to him. But I'm sure Haaretz will let them know what to think about Obama soon.

I earlier today attended a meeting with Dr Liam Fox (a former British Secretary of State for Defence) and he was quite ambivalent about the agreement. He asked rhetorically why we had an agreement based on wishful thinking rather than rational analysis?